Orlando International Airport assessing air taxi routes to theme park area

Orlando International Airport is studying routes and vertiport locations for potential electric air taxi passenger service to the area of Central Florida’s theme parks, including Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and SeaWorld Orlando.

Twenty-two trips per day could be safely planned between the airport, which recorded 57 million passengers in 2024, and the theme park area, according to a study commissioned by the airport owner and operator, Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, and conducted by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

This cadence “could result in an efficient operational infrastructure with no traffic or wake turbulence conflicts with existing commercial air traffic at MCO,” reads a paper about the study that was published in April in the open access journal Aerospace. The authors noted that this is “one of the initial evaluations of AAM integration at a major international airport in the United States.”

Disney World, which is roughly the size of San Francisco, is about 28 kilometers from the airport; all three theme parks have exits along a 25-km stretch along Interstate 4.

The paper includes maps of potential routes. In one of them, an air taxi departs a vertiport on the airport’s east side, circling around to gain altitude and overflying the airport terminal to proceed west to the theme park region. Waypoint codes on the maps correspond to the region around Disney World, but that doesn’t necessarily mean vertiports would be built exactly at those points, said Victor Fraticelli, an author of the paper and an assistant professor at Embry-Riddle.

“Potentially, it might be Disney, but I don’t think we were super specific about a particular vertiport,” Fraticelli told me. “That area is more like a generic point.”

A GOAA spokesperson confirmed by email that Disney and Universal are involved in planning for electric air taxi service. Dozens of companies around the globe are developing and testing such aircraft, with regulatory approval anticipated as soon as next year.

“Yes, the theme parks have been part of the ongoing conversations about AAM efforts in the region,” the spokesperson wrote in response to questions. “For example, the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority hosted a tabletop exercise, sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration, and the theme parks were invited to attend. There has been a collaborative approach with local, state, and federal partners in the region, as well as businesses.”

Disney’s theme parks media offices did not respond to inquiries about the possible flights. Disney World has a history of offering innovative transportation options, including the Monorail train and Skyliner gondola lift network. In the 1970s, the resort had a small private airport for short-takeoff-and-landing aircraft.

Air taxi flights are of interest to GOAA for various reasons, the spokesperson said, including offering travelers an option that could be “zero-emission” and more convenient eventually. However, Fraticelli notes that would partly depend on whether the aircraft could reduce transit times compared to renting a car and driving.

For the study, he said he initially proposed routes that would have aircraft flying farther around the airport to the north and south before they proceeded west toward the theme parks. But GOAA officials told him that would cause too much delay, he said, and requested that Embry-Riddle instead study routes in which air taxis would fly over the airport to get to the theme parks more directly.

“Too much delay would defeat the purpose because if it takes too long, people will just take a rental car and drive,” Fraticelli said.

However, that trajectory raises other considerations. Flying over the terminals at Orlando International would require air taxis to ascend to at least 2,500 feet to avoid commercial jetliners, he said. That presents two problems for electric aircraft: climbing takes time, and it saps battery power.

“These vehicles cannot hover for long; they have to transition to forward flight very quickly after lifting off vertically,” Fraticelli added.

Assessment of the potential routes will continue, according to Fraticelli and GOAA. The airport is also considering a potential vertiport location near the Brightline train station, which would be further west than the initial eastside location.

The first study was “a benchmark or starting point. We had to make assumptions about performance, based on very generic info” about aircraft performance, Fraticelli said.